Associate Professor of Anthropology

Dept. of Anthropology

Vanderbilt University

Nashville, TN 1

HeaNNding 1

In Mexico I work mainly with Tzotzil Maya speakers my research explores mainly the relationship between culture and cognition. How does practice and the social environment shape both how we think and what we think? What constitutes knowledge and how is it acquired by children? How do these processes interact with social processes - and how do we reconceptualize these processes as a result? are some of the questions I focus on.

Lines of research relate to ontology, folkbiology, ethnicity, and religion. I focus on

In the Middle East, my work focuses mainly on questions related to ethnicity, emerging nationstates, tribalism, political violence, and terrorism. Currently the focus is on the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, Iran, Syria, as well as the political developments in Lybia.